At 7am we were at the Pachamama gate with our bags waiting for the San Jose bus to come past. We’d had a lovely breakfast (as usual) a little bit earlier than normal and had said goodbye to Bill and Cathy. It has been a very relaxing and peaceful week in this corner of Costa Rica and we’d definitely come back again (one day). The bus was a bit late but we were only the second and third people on board so got to choose a seat (I now pick seating based on proximity to windows that can be opened for a breeze). As drove along we picked up passengers, mostly tourist types, and by the time we left Cahuita (the next town on from Puerto Viejo) the bus was basically full.
We had one long stop at a border post, everyone had to get off the bus and show their passports to the border policeman to prove we had the right to be in Costa Rica. There was also a rest stop and I think I slept for much of the rest of the journey, arriving in San Jose in the early afternoon.
We got a taxi to the Hotel Aranjuez and got ourselves ready for a quick bit of organisation in the city. We had some more stuff to post home and also needed to cash some travellers cheques and finally print off our confirmation for the Galãpagos trip (which starts tomorrow evening!).
It took ages to find a box for the stuff being sent home, in the end a helpful lady at the post office pulled a box of almost the perfect size from out of a back room. We went to two different banks and got quite different services on cashing the cheques; one would only do $500 with 1% commission (Scotiabank) and the other would only do $1000 but with no commission (HSBC). We’ll have to do some more in Quito. Finding an Internet cafe to print out the confirmation was the easy part.
Back to the hotel, making a reservation at Cafe Mundo on the way, and we did some more organising. Then we went out for dinner (Keryn’s chicken was better than OK but she was non-committal, my pizza was yummy). The service was very quick, we were in and out in well under an hour. Now it’s time for one last sleep in San Jose, we head out to the airport around 8am tomorrow morning. I’ll upload this then turn in for the night I think.
